Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith

Every six months my childhood church holds a general conference where prominent church leaders speak.  Last week my favorite leader gave a sermon regarding questioning your faith.  A quote from his talk is receiving a fair amount of buzz, “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.”  I am sure that many members interpret this to mean one should be leery about any questions that would lead you away from the church- and perhaps that is what the elder meant.  However, one of the great things about literature whether it be a classic poem, the scriptures, or even musical lyrics is that they can have an entirely different meaning to different people and even the same person at different times.

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.  Do you know what the archaic definition of doubt is?  It’s fear.  Doubt your fear before you doubt your faith.  I can’t tell you how many times in life I have made decisions based on fear.  Let me say, they almost never were the right decisions.  You can spend your entire life worrying and stressing about the unknown but you are battling a ghost and you will be miserable for it.  Within every religion you will find members and leaders that are happy and those that aren’t.  It baffled me for years until I realized it depended on what the individual was clinging to- fear or faith.  A spiritual foundation in fear stresses obedience, perfection, and eliminating sin (which is everywhere).  Fearful spirituality scrutinizes everything and everyone.  It is judgmental and exclusive.  On the other hand, faith encourages growth, exploration, love and trust.  It is forgiving, encompassing, and all inclusive. 

So for me, doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith means carefully examining whether your known truths, your attitudes and perceptions, are coming from a place of fear or faith.  If a decision or principle you live by involves the words can’t, should, shouldn’t, or have to, then probably something is wrong. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven…many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?...And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.”  Did you know that in the first four books of the New Testament, the books that follow Jesus’s ministry that the word obedience never occurs?  Nada, not once.  That’s because obedience is a system of fear.  The fear of what will happen (or not happen) if one doesn’t comply.   Fear and faith cannot coexist.  People may say they are following the rules because they have faith that there will be some reward at the end, but in actuality they are following the rules because they fear that if they don’t they won’t get the reward at the end.  Perhaps you think the difference is trivial, but to me it is huge!

As I walk my path I am having to carefully examine what principles and truths I want to take with me and what I want to dump along the wayside.  Some are trickier than others because they are so engrained in me and I have held to them for so long.  I have found however, when I let something go, it will either leave this nagging heavy feeling or it will just be missed.  The nagging heavy feeling is the stuff that has to go.  Beliefs based in fear dig into you and claw at you when you try to abandon them.  They yell and scream and make you feel guilty and less than.   Surprisingly, beliefs that are based in faith go quietly.  You could almost walk away and never look back, but then you realize you’re missing something in your life; like losing a best friend.  That’s how you know it’s a belief you want to hold on to.